This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 4.
Most of the X-Men ’97 episode “Rise of Apocalypse Part II” focuses on, well, Apocalypse and the X-Men sent back to Ancient Egypt to prevent his transformation from En Sabah Nur into the big blue supervillain we know and love. But in the Mighty Marvel manner, the episode ends with a post-credits scene, one that sets up a new storyline that has nothing to do with the characters in the rest of the episode. Wolverine, dressed in black, meets up with Captain America and Black Widow, who give him a file marked “Weapon X.”
The trio’s meet-up nods toward Jim Lee‘s cover for 1990’s Uncanny X-Men #268, and the folder that Cap gives Logan recalls the cover of 1991’s Wolverine #50. And when Wolvie says he’s “Getting the band back together,” he may very well be referring to Team X, the group of adamantium-infused soldiers that includes Sabertooth, Silver Fox, and Maverick, seen in the Original Series. But given X-Men ’97‘s attention to stories published after the end of X-Men: The Animated Series, the post-credits may be setting up a different arc, one that changed the way we think about Captain America.
Even the most casual X-Men fan probably knows the gist of Weapon X. Introduced alongside Wolverine in 1974’s Incredible Hulk #180, Weapon X was the secret government program that conducted experiments in the super-metal adamantium. As seen in X-Men: The Animated Series, the program not only gave Wolverine his metal skeleton, but also enhanced Sabertooth and gave Deadpool his healing factor. Furthermore, “Weapon X” also refers to Wolverine, considered the program’s greatest achievement.
Almost everything about Weapon X is shrouded in secrecy, even to readers, because Wolverine could not remember his past until the 2005 storyline House of M. That secrecy meant that information about Wolverine’s past was doled out in small, and often contradictory, chunks. For example, Wolverine has no real name for his first several appearances in Incredible Hulk and Uncanny X-Men, and even after a leprechaun calls him “Logan” in 1977’s Uncanny X-Men #103 (yes, you read that right), it takes a while for his teammates to find out this information and start using the name regularly. Likewise, Wolverine originally said that his claws were part of his costume, and then later says they were given to him with his adamantium skeleton, only to reveal that he has had bone claws he was a child.
All of that is a long way of saying that even though the original X-Men series did sometimes delve into the history of Weapon X, that history has changed a lot in the thirty years since the show ended.
One of the most important changes occurs in Assault on Weapon Plus, a four-part storyline by Grant Morrison and Chris Bachalo that appeared in New X-Men #142–145 (2003). The story begins with Cyclops in a bar, trying to shed his boy-scout persona and drown his sorrows after Jean Grey learned about his psychic affair with Emma Frost. He finds Wolverine sitting across the bar, who has come with a masked man called Fantomex to look for Cyclops. Wolverine needs Cyclops’ help to come with him and Fantomex and find Weapon Plus. The evolved version of Weapon X, Weapon Plus holds the files of its predecessor, and Wolverine wants to find what’s in them.
The quest takes the trio into the World, an advanced metauniverse (it is a Grant Morrison comic, after all) operated by Marvel superscientists. Within the World, Wolverine and we readers learn important information about Weapon X. First, it’s not “Weapon X,” it is “Weapon 10,” as in “the tenth version of the Weapon Plus program.” Fantomex comes from Weapon XIII, the storyline builds to a battle against the super-sentinal Ultimaton from Weapon XV, and several other characters have been retconned as projects of previous Weapon Plus Programs. For example, 2019’s Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus reveals that Ted Sallis was turned into Man-Thing through Weapon IV and the procedure that gave Luke Cage his powers stems from Weapon VI.
But the biggest revelation points to the source of the whole debacle. Weapon I, the first of the Weapon Plus programs, was led by Dr. Abraham Erskine in World War II, and led to the transformation of Steve Rogers into Captain America. In that moment, we realize that all the lies, suffering, and destruction caused by the Weapon Plus program occurred because Captain America exists.
Of course, this is yet another retcon to the two characters’ pasts. But it’s one that deepens them both, in opposite directions. For Captain America, it reminds him that all the good he does carries the taint of governments willing to destroy people in pursuit of power. They made him to be a weapon, and he must continue to overcome that intention. Conversely, that same fact provides hope for Wolverine, who has always worried that he’s an irredeemable beast. If Captain America can transcend from a weapon into something good, maybe he can as well.
Will X-Men ’97 delve into all of these details? It’s hard to say. Weapon X did show up in a few original series episodes, a very different program from the one that Morrison imagined. But if it does, the show can make for a more morally-complicated Wolverine, and further bring the rest of Marvel into the world of the X-Men.
X-Men ’97 season 2 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.
